Zune Forums: develop a feature with the zune social team

And...finally! The functional spec

jetherealz — Fri, 30 May 2008 22:28:20 GMT

First off: My sincere apologies for the delay with this.

Want to hear why? Here goes.

1) the release of 2.5 took a lot more time than I thought it would (from me personally).

2) Other priorities I had to complete at the same time - working on the next release!

3) A trip to China to meet with our development team there sucked up some of my time.

4) I had to figure out how to publish the documents - frankly, the Zune site today didn't give me any good options (it's too long for a blog post, and it has pictures!)

So, you want to see it?

http://jzune.blogspot.com/

Please leave your comments here.

Remember that my team gets to comment and shape this thing too; what I describe is my synthesis of the ideas we developed earlier this year, and it's now time to refine them. Refining them, though, means getting realistic about what we can build - so it's possible not everything I spec'ed will actually become reality.

But hey, comment away...and again, I'm sorry this has taken longer than I expected.

Next steps: A functional specification!

jetherealz — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 23:24:40 GMT

Okay, I'm back from vacation and ready to go!

The next step in developing this game is for me to write a functional spec and create some "wireframes" - rough pictures of what the game would look like. I'm going to aim to have that done by this Friday. If anyone out there has a desire to write any part of this document with me, let me know - otherwise, I'll write it, post it, and the community can review it.

And the winner is...music trivia!

jetherealz — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:35:25 GMT

Thanks everyone for the awesome suggestions - both for a game idea for The Social and for other requests (you can continue to submit other requests in the Wishlist forums!).

Based on the poll and your comments, music trivia seems to have risen to the top. So let's go with that. Our next step is to figure out what exactly music trivia means.

Questions to answer:

Can users submit questions?
Do we need editors to approve them?
Should we do genre- or decade-based quizzes?
Are there different types of questions - for example, ones where you listen to a song clip, view an album cover, or is it just trivia (i.e. what is the best-selling album of all time?)
Are questions multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, true-false, a combination of all of them?
Is there a hierarchy of quizzes - for example, I may be a specialist in electronica only, and not know a thing about rock. So we could have genre-based quizzes and then general quizzes, and the more you complete the higher level you attain?
How many questions should be in a quiz? How often do we need to add new questions? Who adds them?
Can users create their own quizzes on their own profile pages about whatever they want?

I'm sure there are more questions to discuss; let's start with these and let you guys imagine what music trivia ought to be like. Remember that music trivia is available all over the web at various sites; we're looking for unique angles on the concept.

And finally, don't forget the legal stuff:

-- You must abide by our Code of Conduct.

-- Any ideas you submit are fair game for Zune to use, per our Terms of Use.

So, keep those ideas and comments coming!

Oh, and btw: I've locked the older threads to keep the comments in here; please stay on topic. Your ideas about things other than music trivia belong here, in the wishlist forums for software, device, marketplace, and social.

Update for March 6

jetherealz — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 04:38:51 GMT

Okay folks!

Welcome to new people who found us through the Zune Insider blog and the March Zune News newsletter, and for those who have been with me since the beginning, thanks for hanging on!

So here's where we are: we have a few ideas for The Social (our web site). Let's continue to discuss them and play "what if" until Monday. On Monday, I'm going to choose the concept that we're going to go with. (As in real software development, it's not quite a democracy; everyone has input, but ultimately one person - the PM - is where the proverbial buck stops.)

Honestly, the idea I'm leaning towards most is the one where we create a music trivia game that's about me - a "get-to-know-me" thing for each person's profile page. Here's a quote from the other thread where we first discussed it:

Something you said triggered a thought for me - I'm totally with you on the "focus on friends" thing and I liked your idea of the "mystery friend." Let me take that a step further: what if we allowed users to create a quiz about themselves and their musical taste, experiences, etc - then people could take your quiz and learn more about you?

So, we'd build an interface that let users create multiple-choice questions and note which is the correct answer. So I could create something like this:

1. Once upon a time, the theme song I had for my boyfriend was:

a - "My Favorite Mistake" by Sheryl Crow

b - "Nothing But You" by Paul van Dyk

c - "Hard to Handle" by the Black Crowes

And you all know it would be "a" based on my babble above. :-)

Would that be fun? It would definitely be unique and totally socially-oriented, two goals of the game...

But, let's discuss until Monday. So if you have new ideas, post 'em here, and other folks, comment on them, please!

Just remember a few things:

-- This is for The Social - not the device. Your suggestions for the device (and for other Social features) should be posted in the wishlist forums. We're listening to those, too - it's just that THIS feature is about a community-co-developed web site activity. Let's keep ourselves on track.

-- You must abide by our Code of Conduct.

-- Any ideas you submit are fair game for Zune to use, per our Terms of Use.

So, keep those ideas and comments coming!

--Jessica

Update for Monday, Feb. 25

jetherealz — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:29:14 GMT

I'm not quite ready to wrap up the idea generation phase yet, so although I said we'd debate ideas until Friday (the 22nd), I'm going to continue that conversation for a bit longer. :-) I'm so excited about this project, though - working with the community in this way might be the coolest thing I've gotten to do at Microsoft. Yay!

Poll: What is the coolest idea for a Zune Social fun activity presented so far?

jetherealz — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 20:03:14 GMT

Desert Island Disc: Some kind of contest for identifying music we'd need to have with us on a deserted islandMusic trivia: Test your music knowledge, show how much more you know compared to your friendsSong dedications, theme songs, etcNah, something else...I'll post my better idea in another thread

Getting started - here are some initial concepts for you to react to

jetherealz — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:47:07 GMT

Okay, let's go! Sounds like there are a bunch of you out there who want to play. And "play" is one of the things I want to accomplish.

So, first we need a concept. I want to build some kind of fun activity or game for The Social. In my mind, it would need to be:

Sticky - something that makes users want to come back
Viral - users want to share it with their friends
Fun - duh
Leverages our strengths - we have so much usage data, it would be cool if we could figure out how to use it for something fun
Also, we can't do anything that requires changes in the software or the device; that's out of scope for this project.

Here are some ideas for you to react to.

Desert Island Discs - maybe some kind of voting on which albums are best; could do it by genre, year, etc

Music Trivia - All kinds of music-related questions, maybe include listening to song clips and guessing the song

Theme song - The ability to publicly dedicate a theme song to a friend (like, dedicate "My Favorite Mistake" by Sheryl Crow to your boyfriend/girlfriend... ha ha!)

Let's talk about this from now until Friday; by then I'd like to try to come to a consensus on what game or activity we want to create. So please post your ideas, thoughts, comments, whatever here.

Two quick reminders:

Any ideas you submit are fair game for us to use (see our Terms of Service, section 8).

You must abide by our Code of Conduct – mostly this means be respectful of others’ ideas.

An invitation to help me design a new feature

jetherealz — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 19:05:21 GMT

Hey Zune community –

Thanks for taking part in the beta of The Social! I hope you’re having fun and seeing the potential as we continue to grow.

I’m a program manager working on The Social. Basically, that means I, along with a development team, design new features for our web site. For those of you who aren’t familiar with software development, the way it generally works is like this: we get feedback on scenarios from users (whether that’s in these forums, doing research, etc), and then we design/build/test/release new features based on these scenarios. So I’m testing out a new idea: What if we try to develop a feature WITH the community? I mean, our community is the energy that powers zune social, right?

Consider this an invitation to design a feature with me. There are some ground rules, though:

Any ideas you submit are fair game for us to use (see our Terms of Service, section 8).
Understand that we’ll read and consider all of your feedback – but the final product may or may not include it. The PM (that’s me!) has final say on what’s in and what’s out.
You must abide by our Code of Conduct – mostly this means be respectful of others’ ideas.
I will only be able to share with you details about this one feature; any information pertaining to other features we’re developing is off-limits.

So how will this work? I’ll provide initial concepts and ideas in this forum dedicated to developing the feature, and we’ll go from there. Together, we’ll develop the concept, user scenarios, and then the feature functional design. We’ll still work with our internal product designer to come up with what it actually looks like, and our software developers and testers will write and test the code. But you’ll be seeing it at each step of the software development process.

What do you say? Are you in? Let’s do it!

I’ll post the initial ideas I have on Monday, Feb. 18. In the meantime, feel free to let me know what you think of this concept.

--Jessica